Sabal Trail Pipeline

Stop the Sabal Trail Pipeline
Tuesday, November 17th, 6:00pm – Suwannee County Board of Commission Meeting
We need you there!

The Sabal Trail Pipeline is a natural gas pipeline being proposed by Texas-based Spectra Energy. It would run from Alabama through Georgia and Florida to a compressor station in Osceola County.

This pipeline would send pressurized, explosive, fracked natural gas 685 miles through a 36-inch diameter pipe, trenching and constructing compression stations on private lands, and drilling under our rivers and through our aquifer in several counties in the Suwannee St. Johns (SSJ) Sierra Club area including Hamilton, Suwannee, Gilchrist, Gilchrist, Levy, Citrus and Marion.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which would have to issue the federal permit for the project, acknowledged in its draft Environmental Impact Study that the region’s Floridan Aquifer is one of the highest producing aquifers in the world, providing about 60 percent of Florida’s groundwater used. It also recognized that the karst terrain the Sabal Trail Project would go through is “critical in controlling recharge and discharge of the Floridan aquifer system” and that the project would have environmental impacts.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a recent letter to FERC, expressed serious concerns about the pipeline and recommends the approximately 515-mile-long pipeline’s path be redrawn to avoid environmentally sensitive areas in Florida.

The Suwannee River Water Management District has suggested that the pipeline route should avoid highly sensitive water resource features, karst topography, and unconfined drinking water sources within the District. Pipeline trenching could intersect the local water table. In some areas horizontal drilling near streams and rivers could impact local flow systems. The deeper horizontal drilling required to pass under large rivers like the Suwannee could potentially intercept karst conduits, so the possibility of restriction or redirection of groundwater flow to local springs and wells exists.

And yet, the project continues to move forward. Several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, have joined in an effort to stop the building of this pipeline. Citizens are turning out to public meetings in all three states to protest the project. SSJ Sierra Club will be sending representatives to the Suwannee County Commission meeting on Tuesday, November 17th to make our views known. We need you to join us there!